


A lady's favour

by Kit



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/F, Post Game, combining plotlines in as pleasing a fashion as I can manage, context what context?, fairy tales re-purposed to nefarious ends, never banter against an antivan, ridiculous courtly love references seem only appropriate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-27
Updated: 2015-03-06
Packaged: 2018-03-03 20:40:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2886803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kit/pseuds/Kit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Josephine has every intention of sweeping her lover off her feet. It's only fair, after all. A collection of small moments, big decisions, fairy tales, and futures.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A lady's favour

 

“Did you know,” Josephine says, lips brushing the scar by her lover’s jaw, “There are people who think we keep the dueling sword on our wall.”

A hitched breath--half laugh, half groan. Cassandra opens her eyes. “Who started  _that_  rumour?”

“Someone who does not know you very well,” Josephine says. “So Varric is spared.” She smirks. “He would think of a better story, besides.”

“I resent that.”

“Which part?”

A creak, half a laugh, and Cassandra pulls Josephine on top of her, hands easy on her waist. “All of it, of course.”

“Stories do follow you, my lady.” Josephine drops a kiss to her nose, groaning soft and deep in her throat as Cassandra’s hands move up her sides. “You are a narrative gift.”

Blushes and scowls are quite similar on Cassandra’s face. Both are dear. Josephine laughs. She kisses her cheek. Her temple. Her shoulder.

“I have,” she says, “A favour to ask you. It is important.”

“Aren’t they all, ambassador?” Hands on her face. Cassandra’s thumbs pressed gently to her cheekbones, the swell of her lower lip.

“I need,” Josephine says, “For you to teach me how to best use that sword.”

“Excuse me?”

“You heard.” She’s grinning, can feel her own face ache at the the pull of it. Josephine has no notion of what she looks like, but Cassandra’s eyes have gone wide. 

“You see,” she says on a sigh. “There are letters.”

“Letters.”

“The correspondence has grown…quite heated.” Josephine shifts, gently extricating herself from Cassandra’s hold and arranging herself neatly on the bed, knees drawn up, arms around them.

She keeps her eyes on Cassandra’s appalled face.

“There have been overtures,” Josephine says. “From Nevarra.”

“You  _cannot_ be serious.”

“I am always serious.”

“This is—” Cassandra swallows. “You’re telling me that someone  _approached_ you, to offer—”

“—We have been discreet.” Josephine shrugs. “You are still part of the Inquisition. I am its ambassador. The assumption was—”

Cassandra glares into space. “The assumption,” she says, “Was wrong.”

“Which is precisely why I need your sword,” Josephine says. “I will not fight any less for you than you fought for me. Besides.” A smile. “I am Antivan. And it is a fight for love.”

“ _You_  are—”

“—Always serious, my lady Pentaghast.” Josephine lets two fingers rest against Cassandra’s lips. “And all the world will see it.”


	2. Agelast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Early days: the Seeker and Ambassador each see a little of themselves in the other across Act 1.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Josephine Montilyet, fierce duelist, shall make a reappearance. In the meantime, I find that I've written enough pentilyet drabbles by this point to want to have them all together, and here seemed like the best place, since they all take place in the same universe. I hope you enjoy! This fic was originally on my tumblr.

"How do you do it?”

Cassandra is halfway through the chantry doors, head full of old incense and Leliana’s latest schemes. The Herald, she is sure, is up to their elbows in trouble. There are recruits to train. There is—

—There is something wrong with Josephine’s voice.

Cassandra turns.

Josephine has her hands flat against the table, tips of her fingers pressing hard enough into the scratched wood that she’ll end up with splinters. Her shoulders are hunched forward, eyes fixed.

“Do what?”

“You’re going out there,” Josephine says, not looking up. “I’ve seen you standing in all that snow. Day in, day out. And it’s what you  _do_ , of course, but—” she swallows. “Aren’t you  _cold?”_

“…The armour,” Cassandra manages. “It helps. Oh,  _please_ don’t—”

Josephine’s shoulders have started to shake.

When she meets Cassandra’s eyes, she’s smiling. A strained thing, hiding laughter. “Perhaps I should invest,” she says, with a sweeping, inviting gesture of both hands that takes in the flare of her sleeves and skirt. She touches the small buttons at her cuffs. “What do you think?”

“That you’re running mad.”

“Understandable.” Josephine sighs. “Ignore my rambling. I forgot myself.”

“Do you have a draft?”

“I’m sorry?”

_Ugh. Words._

“Your office,” Cassandra says. “Have you noticed a draft in your office?”

“I—perhaps? Candles gutter all over this place.”

Cassandra can’t help her exasperated groan. Josephine looks down again, shaking her head.

“You could—come and see?”

A snort for that. “I think I’d better.”

“I’d be grateful,” Josephine says, pulling away from the war table and moving to the other woman’s side in a rustle of fabric. “You are dashing in your armour, Seeker, and I’m glad it is warm, but if I tried, I would probably alarm our guests.”

The idea, Cassandra thinks, as the two of them walk to the ambassador’s makeshift office, has peculiar appeal.

* * *

 

It had been a good thing, fixing a cracked, unbalanced door. Hands work, skills learned from her own apprentices, who’d always laughed at the idea that she would teach them and expect that they give her something in return.

“You are young,” she’d said. “Never unskilled.”

She had fixed the draft in Josephine’s office with a gift she’d learned from her first apprentice, who had the hope of his Templar mother and the hands of his carpenter father. She walked away from the ambassador’s office with something strong left behind. It was a good day.

Haven changes them all. Cassandra is used to fear and anger turning people into smaller, brittle forms of themselves. Cullen and Leliana bicker, his thoughts circling inward, while Leliana blazes, glaze-eyed with fury. Cassandra does not consider the changes in herself. If they are there—and they probably are—then no amount of picking at them will ease the mix of anger and wonder at seeing half a mountain fall and a whole person stagger out of it. She had caught them. They had no more weight than anyone else. She is not sure if that is wrong or right.

Solas has the Herald now, a hand on their arm as the party is lead up—always up. The trek feels like a slow spiral.

Cassandra sets her jaw, and follows. Her legs and back ache, hands stiffening in her gloves. She chivvies townspeople and shouts at soldiers, and tries to be on the edge of firelight circles when Varric has enough energy to tell stories about spiders and surviving and how much he hates it when the ground decides on vertical. They are good stories. She is not surprised.

Josephine surprises her.

She works Lists. Lists  _for_ the lists, all kept close about her. She is sharper and stronger than Cassandra has ever seen, breaking apart arguments without quite raising her voice, but glaring more from horseback than she ever did over her desk. Her hands are restless, hair pinned back tight enough that Cassandra can see the skin pulling at her temples. Josephine’s braid gleams with them. Her fingertips are red with cold, black with ink. She walks and rides and sits straight-backed and indrawn at camp, listening to the others snap and plan and letting her own words slide into any empty space.

She does not sleep.

It takes days for Cassandra to notice this. She has a soldier’s skill of sleeping where she stands, when she has to, and the first few nights after Haven are too blurred, too full of smoke and flying snow and dead faces.

(Cassandra notices Josephine’s sleeplessness the way she notices most things, she thinks, shaking her head at herself.  _Eventually.)_

She takes the night watch. Moves between camps and banked fires and uneasy horses, the night cold and tight on her skin. Josephine sits at the edge of the main camp, arms drawn up around her knees, head bent forward.

“You will do yourself an injury.”

“Pardon?” A numb courtesy. Josephine does not look up.

“Is it nightmares?” There are gentler ways, Cassandra knows. She’s tried to memorize them. Somehow, they’re never what falls out of her mouth.

“If I’m disturbing you, my lady, then—”

“-You  _are_ disturbing me,” Cassandra says. She hunkers down at Josephine’s side, leathers creaking. “Though not in the way you think.”

A quick look for that, narrow-eyed and sceptical. She might have laughed. At Haven. “I…do not know what I think.”

“You are exhausted,” Cassandra says. “You are one of the first on your feet in the morning, one of the last to sit down at at the night’s camp. You—”

“—you only know that because  _you_ are up before me.”

Cassandra shrugs. “I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, Josephine.”

“Sleep is—” Josephine swallows. “Have people died for you, Seeker?”

“Yes.”

The world is fire-orange and blank behind closed eyes, impressions slow in fading away.

“Yes,” she says, simple and direct. “Yes, and it never makes sense. Not truly.”

“How do you  _stand_ it?” The words come louder than Josephine expects. She presses a hand to her mouth, fingers pressing hard. The next words are muffled. “They had…building tools. Their hands. No training. And one of the Red Templars would have ripped off my head if—”

“—if they hadn’t stepped in front of you.”

Cassandra sighs. She reaches out, pulls at Josephine’s arm so that the hand covering her mouth drops away.

“They were  _stupidly_  brave,” Josephine says, voice thick. “I did not know their names. I should have. Now, I’ll know them all. But I can’t…” she swallows. “Their lives were worth more than mine.”

“True,” Cassandra says, and she does not smile at the other woman’s noise of surprise. “And yours is worth more than theirs. At the same time.”

“That makes no sense.”

“Precisely.”

Josephine looks at her again. Steadier, her breathing slowed almost to normal. “That sounds oddly heretical, Cassandra.”

What is the Inquisition, if not a collection of odd heretics?  _That_  thought does make her smile, Josephine’s eyes still intent on her face.

“It is late,” Cassandra mutters. “I’m not making sense. But…if you sleep, I will not tell anyone your dreams. And they do ease, in time.” She shifts, and Josephine sqeaks as Cassandra settles an arm around her shoulders, stretching her legs out toward the fire.

“Bully,” Josephine mutters.

“No worse than you when you forced me to write to my relations, Josephine.”

“ _Forced_ you? I—”

“—Strongly encouraged. Pen in hand, Leliana at your shoulder.” Cassandra’s lips quirk. “You are formidable.”

Josephine’s answering laugh is small, hoarse and hesitant and soon swallowed up by the sleeping camp. But somehow, it feels like a start.


	3. INTERLUDE: The Lady in Nevarra - as told by one Yvette Montilyet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A prompt for a re-figured Repunzel on tumblr that got slightly out of hand, I imagine Yvette likes to bring this one out at parties.

I will tell you a story. Not a long one, that’s true. But it has skulls and secrets. A sword fight and a smiling kiss. I have your attention? Yes, I see.

There was a girl in a tower at the centre of Nevarra. “ _Come in_ ,” her uncle had said. “I have spoken to your brother, and he has things to say just for you.”

Since her uncle was one of the Mortalitasi, and her brother was dead, the girl did as he said. And he locked the door behind her. Just like that.

(Her brother did have a message. A single word, furious and not quite fast enough; cold against the back of her neck.

_RUN.)_

“You are the King’s relation,” her uncle said, hearing her bang her fists against the stone. “He said to keep you safe.”

“How will I be safe  _here_?” she asked.

“Because, Cassandra-” that was her name — “You will be out of the way. I only look after the dead, you know, and I’m worried that I’ll make a mistake.”

And with that, the Mortalitasi called up his magic, and bound his niece by all of her names, until her voice was hoarse from swearing and her uncle was no longer there.

So Cassandra grew up in a tower. She grew tall and she grew strong, because her uncle sent skeleton attendants to wait upon her, and she beat them down and took the blades they had died from and the old armour they had died in, and while the place was spelled tight enough that no blade in her hands could even chip the stone, she grew powerful from the effort. Sometimes, the skeleton attendants brought books she liked as a peace offering. She took those too. She read aloud to fill her small space with chevaliers and good wizards, and the bards who always spoke in patterns of five. She learnt all their voices, and her world was better for them.

As the years passed, she asked her uncle when she would be let out. Ask is the wrong word, most of the time. She demanded. She fought. The Mortalitasi learnt never to send his favourite attendants to deliver messages, because Cassandra’s replies made splinters of them.

“I’m keeping you safe,” he said.

“You keep  _yourself_  safer,” she answered, and he could respond to that, because Mortalitasi cannot lie.

One day, a traveller came to Neverra. She had ink on her fingers and gold at her ears, and always wore the right gloves. You know the sort, very proper when it suits them, with brothers at her back like loud, fast shadows, while  _I_ —yes, fine. I an getting distracted, I know. The story is, the traveller came to Nevarra, and she was a lovely woman, who knew how to listen. Her name was Josephine.

She heard about the ailing king, and the dragons that ate everyone’s third cousins. She heard about the Mortalitasi tower, where a treasure lived. That’s what they said. A treasure in the tower. She heard, but did not think of it, because towered treasure did not travel well, and she had a contract that needed seeing to in Orlais before the month was out, but her ears picked up other sounds.

When Josephine walked past the tower, she heard stories above her head.

 _How strange,_  she thought. The stories all started out the right way, but tended to take queer turns. Maferath released the error of his ways and apologized on bended knee for even  _thinking_ of giving his wife to enemies. Aveline stood helm-less and triumphant at her tournament, and the crowd all cheered at the sight of her.

The Lady Montilyet heard these stories, and liked them much better than any that came before. She wrote a note, and gave it to her messenger crow. “Take this,” she said. “Deliver it, and come back to me.”

The bird, long used to odd requests, probably went  _craaaawk_.

Now, imagine you are Cassandra. You are in your tower, probably hanging off a roof beam by your chin just to pass the time, and a great flapping bird comes in. It has a note tied to its leg.

“My dear reader, thank you for an afternoon of wonderful stories. Won’t you come down? I would love to see the face behind such things, and your tower is rather high.

Yours in hope, J.”

She always  _did_ write stiff little letters.

Cassandra took one look at this, and laughed, dashing off her reply in a bold hand and less time than it takes to tell.

“If you think I could come down, don’t you think I would? I speak for my sanity, and if that entertains then it is no concern of mine.”

She tied the message back to the poor bird, and gently tossed him out the window, so he could fly away.

Such auspicious beginnings meant that, of  _course,_  Josephine wrote back. What is it you always say? Conversation is the blah-blah—yes. The heart of the matter. 

She wrote again, and Casandra wrote back, and the notes became less snippy and the bird quite weary before the day was out. Josephine found she was very worried for Cassandra, who gave her name slowly, reluctantly.

“I’ve been bound by it before,” she wrote. “If I could, I would never be a Pentaghast again.”

Now Josephine, she knew names, and she would not be any sort of Antivan if she didn’t know the secrets behind them as well.  _Pentaghast_ was a name of power.

“If you say anything about dragons,” Cassandra wrote, “I will bite you. Figuratively speaking.”

“No, not dragons,” Josephine promised, writing with a smile and the press of her lips to the paper when she was done, “Lawyers. Not quite the same. I do believe I can get you out. I just need one thing from you.”

“I will not say ‘anything’”, Cassandra declared. 

“Not anything, no, not at all! Simply a token of some kind. A sign from your family, to prove who you are. Lawyers are demanding.”

Cassandra read that note with raised eyebrows and a sigh, but she reached up and pulled the tight-woven braid from her hair. You know the sort. The braid that every noble lady might wear across Thedas, with house colours and charms tucked in for the discerning or nosy to find.

She tied it safe, and watched as the messenger flew lopsidedly away.

She was most surprised when the bird came back with another braid. This one was black, and heavy in her hands. The note that came with it only said, “Thank you, my lady,” and Cassandra might have blushed. 

Josephine took the braid, and did what Montilyets do best. She talked. She talked to messenger girls and to secretaries, and to the secretaries of secretaries, and then she had appointments. When Josephine had appointments, she had allotted time. Allotted time is dangerous in the hands—or the mouths—of those who know how to use it.

Soon, all Nevarra was talking, and the Mortalitasi could not block his ears.

 _Where is your niece?_  They said.  _What are you doing?_  They said. And Cassandra, all the while, was bolstered by a hundred little notes. They were, she learned, each sealed with a kiss.

“Preposterous,” she said, but she smiled as she said it, and listened to the noise below.

One day, the noise grew so loud that the Mortalitasi could not sleep. This could not be borne. Sleep is closest to death, after all, and closest to death is where Mortalitasi need to be.

“I will let you go!” he said. “All you have to do is fight me.”

An easy request, he thought. But he had not seen what Cassandra had learnt to do with the swords of dead warriors. He expected a child to stagger out into the open, by their tower. He was, it should not surprise you, the sort who lost track of living time.

When Cassandra Pentaghast stepped outside that tower in Nevarra, it felt like half the city had come out to see. And I should know, of course. I was pressed close to the front—close enough to see the beaten Templar armour Cassandra put about herself, and the gold threads in my sister’s gloves.

When the Mortalitasi saw her—saw the strength in her arms and the anger in her stance—he cheated. He brought the dead to bear on her. Shades and skeletons and the terrible sort who are in between. He made a wall between them, and we all saw how she fought. The messenger bird, who had grown quite fond of her over their strange acquaintance, flew in her aid, pecking at eyeballs that were no longer there.

Cassandra fought until the last corpse had fallen, and her uncle was on his knees, bereft of all his dead.

“What will you do with him?” asked the crowd.

“He is nothing,” Cassandra said.

“What will you  _do_?” asked the crowd.

That was a harder question. Cassandra looked at the sky, which seemed too big without its window border. She looked at the crowd, which felt like a breathing, angry thing that she did not know how to touch, even if she wanted to. She looked and she looked, until bright eyes met hers.

“You may travel with me, if you wish it,” said Josephine. “Your stories are still the best I’ve ever heard.”

And my sister stepped forward and cupped Cassandra’s face between her ink-stained hands, and kissed her until the crowd had its fill and let them be.

Each wore a new smile just for the other, and the world was both large and bright.

THE END

 


	4. Drabbles: Haven to Halamshiral

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While Yvette may spin elaborate tales of her sister and the Seeker, the truth is that they came together in small steps. Plus the occasional roof repair. Starts as a direct follow-on from _Agelast._

Cassandra eyes her handiwork, hammer still in hand, and it is hard to keep from grinning. She stands easily on the ambassador's desk. 

"It’s nothing," she says. "These buildings are often ramshackle. There weren’t always lay sisters able to help." 

Josephine has crucial reports clutched to her chest. “It is  _something,_  Cassandra. Most certainly.” She smiles, bright and relieved as the Seeker drops back to the floor, sawdust and grit showing pale in her hair, and up well past the elbows. 

"This only makes sense," Josephine says. "You are a most certain person." 

Cassandra groans. 

* * *

Josephine leaves Haven behind with a gasp and three painful steps into the old pilgrimage tunnel, shaking off Leliana’s arm when her friend attempts to add strength that Josephine swears she will find in  _herself_. Somehow. Even if she’s weeping.

The tears feel too hot on her face. This makes no sense. She was not burnt. She is not dead, not wounded. She did not stay behind, waiting for snow and rock to fall. She is here, and she is  _walking_ —

—and Cassandra’s hand grasps her arm, pulling her along in the dark. 

* * *

Cassandra always knows when the younger Montilyets have been in contact. There’s a new brightness to Josephine’s face. 

 _Annoyance_. she’d call it. 

(“They infuriate me. They have no sense of timing. They’re—”

"—They are yours." 

"Oh yes," she’d said, one finger absently tracing the letterhead, "They are always that.")

Seeing it, hearing the tumbled exploits of a younger sister and two brothers with names she can barely keep straight, makes something hurt, deep and wordless but wearing her own brother’s shape. Still, Cassandra finds that she is still watching, still listening, no matter the sting. 

* * *

Cassandra is stiff in her dress uniform. To be fair, it is all red and no shape, all of them standing together like a deck of cards. There is symbolism in that, Josephine knows, but very little in the seams. 

"It’s only one ball," she says now, biting down on her smile as Cassandra shifts from foot to foot. 

"My uncle promised me that when I was eight years old. He was a liar." 

Her braid—the twisted lines of family history that spell out Cassandra Allegra Portia Filomena…—is askew. Josephine has to reach up on tiptoe to do it, but the thing slips into place under her fingers. 

Cassandra’s skin is warm. 

* * *

"Tell me, were you and Leliana ever—" 

Josephine has waited for that question. Seen it in the glances Cassandra gives their friend, the awareness paid to smiles and touches. Scowls, sometimes. And a whole vocabulary of swallows and caught-up breaths. 

Still. That does not mean all things could come easily. The night was long. Bruising, and long. Josephine grips a balcony railing at the Winter Palace, and lets a laugh trickle out.  

"Were Leliana and I ever…"

“ _Ugh._ Were the two of you ever—intimate.” 

"Oh, yes." She turns, taking in Cassandra’s scowl. "When we were young and beautiful." 

Cassandra kicks the railing. A muffled, metallic thud. “You are hardly a crone.” 

"You are too kind. And you?" 

"Am I a crone?" Cassandra snorts. "Just ask Var—"

"Were you and Leliana ever…" she lets the word drop, wondering at herself for this teasing. It is, of course, unspeakably rude. Cassandra looks as if she might combust, the green in her eyes catching as a lantern swings above them. 

“ _No_.” 

"Left and right hand, you see," Josephine murmurs, sliding her fingers together in a loose hold. "Very fitting, but I spoke in jest." 

"I…did not," Cassandra says. "And it was rude of me. My apologies." 

"All," Josephine says, pressing her lips to the other woman’s palm, "Is forgiven." 

 


End file.
